This invention relates to jamming equipment in general and more particularly to an adaptive blanking interface which will enable a radar jamming system to interface with a plurality of different radar warning receivers.
As is well known, radars jammers are employed to transmit microwave energy and can do so with the object of confusing or obscuring information that other radars are attempting to gather. The concept as indicated is referred to as jamming and jamming is of two fundamental types. A first type of jamming approach is referred to as a brute force approach while a second type of jamming equipment employs a deceptive routine. Brute force jamming attempts to obscure as completely as possible the information contained in other radar signals by overpowering these signals. On the other hand, deceptive jamming endeavors to create mutations in the information contained in other radar signals to render them less useful tactedly. Both types of jammings are aided by the one-way transmission characteristic as contrasted with the two-way transmission characteristic of active radar.
This feature allows a deceptive jammer to operate successfully with a few watts of transmitted power against for example a radar transmitting hundreds of thousands of watts of peak power. In any event, the design of jamming radar systems is a very difficult and sophisticated technique and is a considerable problem in regard to radar systems in general. The difficulties arise from the vast multitude of possibilities with which a jamming system must cope.
In modern military aircraft self-protection equipment which are normally found in the installation are a radar warning receiver (RWR) and a radar jammer. The RWR is capable of detecting the presence of radar threats and provides a display of the type, proximity and location of such threats. The radar jammer provides radar deception techniques to deny the capability to perform target tracking and weapon systems delivery from radar controlled weapon systems. In any event, the combination of the radar jammer and the radar warning receiver has been employed extensively in modern military aircrafts as well as in other locations.
As one can ascertain, there are many different companies which supply different radar warning receivers. As such, each of the receivers require different blanking schemes in order to assure operation and compatibility with the associated radar jammer. In regard to radar jamming devices certain devices have been designated as aircraft self-protection jammers (ASPJ). Such devices exist on various military aircraft and, as will be described subsequently, operate to provide jamming signals to enemy radar installations in order to confuse such systems and in order to circumvent the firing of missiles and various other devices which are capable of destroying the aircraft.
As one will ascertain, currently designed RWR/jammer interface equipment as well as other avionic jamming equipment do not adapt themselves easily to the changing of blanking frequency ranges or cannot accommodate different types of blanking without substantial changes to hardware involved with the jamming equipment or the RWR or both. It is understood that hardware changes to current military avionics are involved efforts requiring extensive time and funding This further is complicated by the fact that packaging or the placement of additional hardware in an aircraft is an extremely difficult task to implement.
As one would readily ascertain, the space available on an aircraft is extremely limited and the addition of additional hardware or circuitry oftentimes is an impossible task.
Thus, the above-noted constraints limits the use of jamming equipment to a small number of platforms thus creating a complexity in the different types of jamming equipment which may be employed. While the invention is described in regard to an aircraft self-protection jammer (ASPJ), the general technique is applicable to any device which employs a transmitter which will be used in multiple configurations and which radar transmitter or other transmitter must be blanked by other equipment during the course of operation. Other devices and apparatus which fall into the general category of this invention are jamming equipment, radars and altimeters.
It is a general object of the present invention to develop a system of accommodating the blanking needs of a variety of different radar warning receivers (RWR). A combination of software processing and unique hardware elements is employed to adapt the jamming equipment to the blanking scheme of the RWR of its host aircraft. The apparatus to be described enables one to utilize various RWR's with different ASPJ devices and eliminates the necessity of reprogramming or adjustment of an ASPJ device.
Hence, such devices can be moved from one aircraft type to another and, based on the hardware to be described, can successfully interface with different RWR types or configurations. Thus, the apparatus to be described eliminates the requirements for hardware modification of the jammer and enables a jammer to interface with different RWR devices.